If You Find There the Meaning of What Happiness Is
by Denaliyasha
Summary: My retake of the episode with the grimlocks, and what happens after. Piper calls Leo... on accident. Rated PG-13 for later chapters on the safe side.
1. Your Friendly, Neighborhood Whitelighter

Disclaimer: I do not own the Charmed Ones. Got it? Good.

Author's Note: I never planned on writing a Charmed fic. I just saw the episode with the Grimlocks and the part where Piper breaks up with whoever she's dating cause when she fell into this drainpipe thingy, she thought about Leo. Here's what I think should have happened. If I get bored (consider that a warning about how often I'll update, unless I get reviews) this could turn out to be a rewrite of the whole show from that episode on... Anyhow, read and review please!

If You Find There the Meaning of What Happiness Is

"Piper!" Phoebe was frantic. Piper had fallen through a hole in the floor. She was lying, motionless, unconscious, on a grate about ten feet down. "Where's Prue when you need her?" Phoebe took off down the tunnel.

Meanwhile, Piper was dreaming. She was in a room with white walls but a black floor. Under her feet, the floor seemed to warp and twist. Suddenly her boyfriend appeared before her.

"We need to talk," he intoned hollowly. "Choose. Do I stay here? Or do I leave you?"

"Don't make me do this..." Piper held out her hands in supplication. "I don't want to be the deciding factor. We've only gone out three times. Am I that important to you? I can't be."

"You've made your choice, then." A pained look on his face, her boyfriend disappeared.

"No!" Piper sank to the ground. She had made her decision already, but she felt guilty about it. The entire time he had been asking her about whether she wanted him to stay, she'd been thinking about Leo.

Leo, nice, dependable (or so she'd thought), cute, nice body, handyman Leo. They'd dated for a while, then they'd "done the deed" and he'd left. Even after that stupid betrayal and heartbreak, she still thought about him.

The landscape of her pain-filled dream world changed. She was watching the Grimlocks try to kidnap her friend's son. She waved her hands to stop time, but nothing happened. Nothing at all...

"Help me! Piper! Help me!" The boy was yelling. It was breaking her heart to hear the cries and be able to do nothing to save him. Without thinking, she waved her hands at them. They lifted into the air.

"What? This is Prue's power!" Piper stared at her hands in disbelief, and the Grimlock freed himself and grabbed the boy. "No, stop! Please!"

She fell to her knees and from there to her back. Piper suddenly panicked. Why couldn't she move? She was hurt so badly...

NO! She had to stay awake. Wait for Prue. She could help. It hurt, though. 'Leo... why can't I stop thinking about him? Leo... please help me...'

The white room was back, black floor moving beneath her. Then, in a flash of blue light, it was the manor, and she was lying on her bed. There was another flash, and she managed to get her eyes open. "Leo?"

"Hey." Leo was standing at the foot of her bed.

"Where am I? I must still be dreaming..."

"No, you're awake. Back at the manor. Your sisters are waiting outside. I'll go get them..." His voice trailed off as he turned to go out the door.

"No, wait." He stopped as she struggled to sit up in bed. "How did you... How did you know where I was? How did you get me here?"

"Oh, that..." Leo looked rather sheepish. "Nothing to worry about. Ah, well, you see, I sorta heard you call for help, and I orbed to you..."

"Orbed?" Piper was really confused. "What? You mean you're..."

"Your friendly neighborhood whitelighter. To all three of you, actually... I'm going to go get your sisters now." He turned to the door, opened it, and beckoned with his hand. He waited for Prue and Phoebe to be in the room, and then he left. Piper was in a state of shock.

"Whitelighter?" Phoebe nodded.

"It appears he's been watching over us. We've just never needed him until now, I guess. His job is to keep us alive, and you broke your back when you fell. Apparently, you called him and he came. Kinda confusing, huh?"

"Yeah, kinda." Piper shook her head. "The Grimlocks?"

"Perfectly dead. Don't worry about it. The two boys have their sight back, as well as the guy from twenty years ago. It's all good. Andy found out about us, but he's keeping it a secret."

"Mmmm," was the only response Piper could make. "Could you send Leo in here on your way out? We need to talk..."

"Sure, Piper." The two girls exited the room.

A/N: This is going to be my relaxation fic. When I get bored with All's Fair In Love and War, I'll update this one. Please, since you've already read, review. If I get enough reviews, I'll update it more often.


	2. All Those Times We Were Possessed

Disclaimer: If I owned it, Leo and Piper would have no problems. Considering that he was possessed recently to scare the charmed ones, I'd say I don't own them.

A/N: Yay! An update! It's taken me forever to mess with this conversation, and I hope you like how it came out. Review, please!

Leo entered the room, looking very timid. Piper, on the other hand, looked serene as she pushed herself more firmly up into a sitting position. She smoothed out the covers and then raised her eyes to meet Leo's nervous ones.

"And you were planning on telling me this when?"

"Actually, I wasn't." Leo's face was strained. He obviously didn't like what he was having to say.

"Pheobe said you'd never shown up as a whitelighter before because we never got hurt bad enough to need it?" At his nod, she exploded. "Oh, so all the times we were possessed before, all the times people tried to kill us, you couldn't help us then? You had to show up just at the time when I didn't need YOU…"

"You were dying. I couldn't let you die."

Piper looked up at Leo's drawn face, steeling herself against the hurt in his eyes. "Well, you killed me when you left without warning. And after… you know? You sure can do wonders for a woman's ego, huh? I have to make a choice about whether a man I've gone on three dates with stays in town or not, and then you pop back into my life." She threw up her hands in annoyance. "It's just one more thing! And that stupid dream… ARG!"

"I didn't want to leave."

"WHAT?" Piper stopped in the middle of a muttered rant to herself and tilted her head to one side.

"I didn't want to leave."

"Well, then, why did you?"

"I had to. I'm not allowed to date you. I'm a whitelighter. You're one of my charges. It's not supposed to happen. It's not allowed."

Piper's gaze went from furious to pained. "Then why did you ever start something?" Her voice got heavy with hurt. "It killed me, damn it! How could you have done that to me?"

"Cause you're you. I couldn't help it." By now, Leo had sat down on the bed next to her. Piper put her head down on her chest and started crying quietly.

"Damn you." Piper couldn't stop crying, but Leo could tell she wasn't angry any more. He gingerly draped an arm around her shoulders, and, when she didn't protest, pulled her gently to him.

"I'm sorry. Really, I am. I wouldn't have hurt you if I could've done anything else."

Piper pulled carefully away from Leo. She stared at him for a moment, considering. "Get out."

"What?"

"I want you out. Please. Just go. We'll call for you if we need you. You can hear us, right?"

"Yes, but…"

"Just go. Please. Don't do this again. I can't take it any more." She pushed Leo off her bed. He sighed.

"If that's what you want."

"It is."

"All right, then." He walked out the door. Piper sank back into the pillows, and started crying her heart out.

Meanwhile, Pheobe and Prue had cornered Leo before he could orb out.

"What did you do to her?" They could all hear Piper crying. Prue was glaring at Leo. If looks could kill, he'd have been six feet under before he could blink.

"I didn't do anything." It was then that Phoebe noticed that Leo seemed distracted.

"Are you even listening?"

"Look, I'm supposed to help if you're in trouble. If you'd called for me by name, or needed me bad enough, before, I'd have come. I can tell when you're in distress. Piper is most certainly in distress at the moment. It's a little distracting, alright?" He put his hands to his temples. "It's not easy for me, ok? I didn't want to hurt her. I can't help being attracted to her, and then I think I fell in love with her, and I couldn't stop myself. Now she hates me, and you hate me, and you're blaming me for her pain, when my heart is just as broken as hers, and she just told me to leave, so can I go now?" He glared at the two witches, who were both staring at him open-mouthed. His little rant had gotten rather loud at points, and they hadn't seen this side of Leo before.

"She told you to leave?"

"Yes," he snapped.

"One moment please." Phoebe disappeared into Piper's room.

Prue continued the disbelieving questioning. "Did you honestly just say you love her?"

"Yes." Leo ran a hand through his hair.

"Oh, my god." Prue and Leo looked up to see Piper standing in her doorway with her hand over her mouth. "Oh, my god."

A/N: Oh, a cliffy! Sort of. Anyhow, review!


	3. And My Day Just Keeps Getting Better!

Disclaimer: Not mine. Although I do own the first season on DVD, now… oh well.

A/N: So I was watching my DVDs of Charmed… and I watched whatever episode with Phoebe and Piper competing for Leo, and I realized that whenever one of them checked out part of his body, they did a camera close-up. I just found it funny. Maybe whoever designed the script (and the camera shots) had a bit of a thing for him? I mean, come on, the guy is incredibly cute. Anyhow, on with Chapter Three since I left you with a horrible cliffhanger…

And My Day Just Keeps Getting Better…

Prue nudged Phoebe. "I think we might want to leave these two alone, huh?"

Phoebe nodded, and the two crept down the hallway. Piper continued to stare at Leo and Leo continued to look at the floor.

"Love?" Piper whispered. "You love me?"

Leo sighed. "Yeah, I do." He looked up, locking eyes with her. "God, I love you so much. I'm not allowed to be with my charges, it's against all the rules. So, when we got to a point where I wasn't in control any more, I pulled away. I didn't know what else to do. I should have told you, really, I should have." By this point, Piper had retreated into her room to sit on the bed, and Leo was standing in the doorway. "And then I felt you dying, and it started to kill me, too. I couldn't get there fast enough. And I was almost too late. You don't know how much you scared me, when I healed you and then you still weren't breathing for a minute."

Numbly, Piper patted the bed next to her. Leo hesitantly sat down where she'd indicated. She still hadn't reacted to his laying his heart in her hands. Was she going to crush it or hold it?

Piper, meanwhile, was trying to wrap her mind around the concept. She'd always thought he'd just liked her, that they'd had passion, yes, but not love. Even before she'd found out he was leaving, she'd felt bad for loving him because she didn't think he loved her back. It had actually dampened the hurt, when he'd gone, because she thought it would have been harder to let him go and have to see him around if he didn't love her. But he did. And now he was back.

"How long are you back for?"

Leo shrugged. "That depends."

"On what?"

"On you."

"Me?" Piper put her hands to her temples. "Oh, god, not again."

"What?" Leo asked, frantically. He hadn't meant to upset her again.

"You're the second guy today who's made me the deciding factor in his travel plans."

Leo felt an unreasonable stab of jealousy. Of course she'd found someone else. It wasn't like he'd ever said he loved her before. "Someone else?"

She threw up her hands in disgust. "We went on three dates, and suddenly it's 'Piper, should I move out of town or not? I won't if you want me to stay.' And the whole time he was asking me, I was sitting there, wishing you were around." She didn't seem to notice what she was saying, and Leo waited with baited breath. "I was just there, wanting you to hold me and tell me it was alright. And then that kid got kidnapped and I felt so helpless…" She didn't move as Leo gently wiped the tears from her eyes. "I just wanted you to be there so I had someone to cling to. And then I had that dream… Oh, god, that dream. It was all nightmarish and creepy and I wanted to get out but I couldn't and I yelled for you and then suddenly I was here. And then I find out that you're not human, you're a whitelighter. I just don't know what to do…"

For the second time that night, Piper buried her head in Leo's shoulder. He put his arms around her, holding her tightly, rocking her gently back and forth. She was crying, and so was he, for all the things that had hurt her. "Shh. It's ok." He stroked her hair softly, as though she were a child. "It's going to be alright."

Piper pressed her face harder into Leo's shirt, wrapping her arms around his waist as tightly as she could. "Damn it, I really thought I'd gotten over loving you," she muttered.

Leo pulled back enough to look her in the eye. "What?"

"I said, I thought I'd gotten over loving you."

"Does that mean…?" He had to hear her say it.

"Yes." She blinked a few times to clear her eyes of tears. "I love you too."

Immediately, Leo leaned down to kiss her. When they both needed to breathe, he sat back with a smile. "So, want to try this again?"

Piper frowned. "But what about your whitelighter duties, the rules?"

"Screw the rules. I would rather break the rules than put either of us through that again."

A/N: Review, please. Hope you enjoyed it. This might be the last chapter, but I'm not sure.


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